Permanent Coexistence for Omnivory Models

Abstract

One of the basic questions of concern in mathematical biology is the long-term survival of each species in a set of populations. This question is particularly puzzling for a natural system with omnivory due to the fact that simple mathematical models of omnivory are prone to species extinction. Omnivory is defined as the consumption of resources from more than one trophic level. In this work, we investigate three omnivory models of increasing complexity. We use the notion of permanent coexistence, or permanence, to study the long-term survival of three interacting species governed by a mixture of competition and predation. We show the permanence of our models under certain parameter restrictions and include the biological interpretations of these parameter restrictions. Sensitivity analysis is used to obtain important information about meaningful parameter data collection. Examples are also given that demonstrate the ubiquity of omnivory in natural systems.